March 30, 2004

JUST VERDICTS

Popjustice makes my week by delivering appropriately judicious verdicts on both BEYONCE and ALICIA 'SURREY' KEYS. On B: she "really needs people around her who can say, 'You are, frankly, mediocre, and you're not going to fluke another 'Crazy In Love', so get The Child back together pronto." LOL!

And as for Alicia Keys, nice to see someone breaking the oppressively tasteful consensus and admitting that's she's dull, worthy, coffeetable, retro, no better than Jamie Cullum or Katie Mellua really. To be honest witchya, I'd prefer to listen to Cullum or Mellua, at least they've got tunes.

beyonce solo makes no sense: she's an excellent producer and technically a scarily terrific singer; but she needs to be a cog in her own pitiless robosoul projects - anyone who thinks destiny's child are mediocre is listening from the wrong direction (DC's music is very nearly as harsh and as soulless as james brown: it screams for surcease from her own relentless ambition machine)

(survivor as a concept LP is a lament, concious and unconcious, for what gospel lost - or sold - to become what it is: unlike whitney say, who kind of lost herself - which is fun to watch but not really any more to listen to - beyonce has a mind like a trap, ambition-wise; you can just hear her ruthlessly cutting off the humanstuff which gets in the way of SUCCESS LIKE AN ADVANCING ARMY)

(jess's argt abt the sexlessness of rap i think applies to beyoncé's conception of R&B: at least if you want to hear what's strong in it.... she really IS a capitalist xtian, after all) (i think it also applies to james brown of course...)

Posted by: mark s at March 31, 2004 08:27 AM

"you can just hear her ruthlessly cutting off the humanstuff which gets in the way of SUCCESS LIKE AN ADVANCING ARMY"

very apposite.

Anyway, I quite like Alicia Keys. I wasn't at all sure for a while, cos it seemed to me that while she was a virtuoso, she didn't have the emotional depth. But the most recent single is a delight to listen to on the radio while you're driving back from Sainsbury's, and there can be no higher praise for pop music than that...

Have you heard Jamie Cullum's version of, IIRC, Frontin'? It's great!

James Brown "soul-less"? Rrrrright. I think that point is getting a bit hyper-real for me. And anyway, even if JB is soul-less, his band wasn't.

Yeh, he can -- it'll sound like cocktail bar jazz, like everything else he does!!!

Posted by: mark k-punk at April 2, 2004 10:24 AM

i really think that beyonce just needs to stop releasing ballads, whether she's solo or with destiny's child -- when i saw DC in 2001, it was pretty hot, but once they got to the ballad section, the crowd was killed dead, and only exhortations to 'get up for jesus' got people out of their seats. i sometimes wonder if her bred-for-stardom-since-a-fetus upbringing has put her on something not unlike autopilot; there are many times when she's dancing in videos that you can see her shifting gears, trying to remember steps and 'moods' in that 11th grade talent show way.

i mean: try and imagine the tell-all memoirs about beyonce 30 years from now; can you picture yourself wanting to read them? would they have anything juicy in them? all i can see are a bunch of recollections of her trying to count out dance moves in her head while she's doing them.